


No Light in the Darkness

by sladeninstitute



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Euthanasia, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Suicide, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 01:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sladeninstitute/pseuds/sladeninstitute
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard McCoy's life is in shambles and it's been that way for awhile. His father's just died, his relationship's a mess, he's an alcoholic that's barely scraping by, and a piece of bad news seems poised to push him over the edge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Light in the Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for euthanasia, suicide, implied/referenced domestic violence, and implied/referenced alcoholism/alcohol abuse.  
> Please turn back now if any/all of those trigger warnings make you uneasy!

Leonard McCoy paced the length of his office relentlessly, one string of thought repeating itself loudly, endlessly in his mind.

_Three days. If we'd only waited three more days._

If he'd just waited three more days, his father would still be alive. More than that, his father would've been healthy again. David McCoy would've been able to be happy, able to move and breathe without pain, able to live again.  _If they'd only waited three more days._

Leonard had spent a year and a half searching for a cure to his father's disease. Looking back on it, he hated the staggering number of times that he'd given his dad false hope. There had been so many "cures" that he'd synthezised and loaded into a hypo, standing by for days while they waited for improvements that never came. Worse than that, there'd been two attempts he could remember that'd only wound up putting his father in a worse condition. He'd always managed to nurse the elder McCoy back up to baseline after those devastating failures, but he could only imagine how hard it must've been on David. How hard it must've been to have been given false hope time after time, and how hard it must've been to have those hopes dashed right in front of his eyes.

 _Maybe,_ Leonard thought,  _that was why dad started asking me to euthanize him._

He remembered the first time that his father had ever asked him to be euthanized. At the time, it'd come completely out of left field, but looking back on it explained his father's pensive mood on that particular day. David McCoy had been silent for the entire day, staring at a point on the far wall with eyes that weren't quite focused. Nobody could coax a word out of him, and everyone had hailed it as a minor victory when David had spoken up and asked for someone to send in his son. When Leonard stepped into the room, David sent everyone else out and signalled for his son to sit in the chair right beside his bed.

>   _"Leonard." Even though he'd only spoken one word, it conveyed all the disappointment and pain that his father must've been feeling at the time. "Leonard, I know you've been working hard. Jocelyn tells me about how you spend days on end locked up in that laboratory down at the hospital, searching for a way to help me, to cure me. I need you to understand just how much I appreciate that."_
> 
> _"Alright...?" Leonard didn't understand why his father was saying this now, and the quirk in his eyebrow expressed it._
> 
> _"I think it's time to give up."_
> 
> _The words came as a shock to the doctor, to hear his father put it so bluntly. He had no idea where the words were coming from, and why they were popping up now. He could only bring himself to stay silent. David spared no time in continuing._
> 
> _"It's been a year, Leo. You've tried so many different things on me and they just ain't working. I'm tired of livin' like this. I know how hard you've been workin' and I promise that I appreciate it more than I'll ever be able to get across, but I think it's time to throw in the towel."_
> 
> _"Throw in the towel?" Leonard shook his head, already knowing that there was no way he'd give up. Not yet. Trying to save his father was just about the only thing that was keeping him going at the moment. Even with the way that his son kept shaking his head, David kept right on talking._
> 
> _"I want you to put me out of my misery. You're a doctor, you've got the skills. I need you to do this for me. I'm tired of the constant pain, tired of bein' confined to this goddamn bed, and I'm tired of all these pitiful looks that people keep givin' me. I want to die." Leonard stared at his father with disbelief, anger, even the slightest hint of betrayal shining in his brown and green specked eyes._
> 
> _"No." The reply was flat, simple, and final. Before his father even had the chance to throw more reasons to die at him, he was up and out of his chair, heading for the door of the bedroom. He was going to cure his father, or his father would die waiting. He made note of just how horrible (and perhaps selfish) that sounded, but it did little to sway his viewpoint._

Things hadn't changed in the past six months, not really. He'd kept working long hours to find a cure for his father (and to get away from Jocelyn) and every couple of weeks he'd be summoned up to that attic room for the same talk with his father that they'd had so many times. The answer never changed. Leonard never thought that the answer would change. 

But then last week, in the haze of one of his alcohol-fuelled rages, he'd deleted all of his research and absolutely torn his lab to shreds. He was frustrated. He'd spent 18 months trying to cure his father and he'd gotten absolutely nowhere. It'd strained his relationship with Jocelyn, strained his relationship with his father, and had negatively impacted his job. And he hadn't even gotten anywhere. He was no closer to a cure than he'd been when his father was diagnosed. He'd slumped up to his father's room in the midst of a raging hangover, plopped down in the chair beside the bed, and said three simple words.

"I'll do it."

David knew exactly what his son meant. Leonard couldn't remember ever seeing his dad quite so happy. He'd always been a guarded man, his emotions hidden behind a mask of grumpiness and indifference. Hell, Leonard had inherited the trait from his father. But in that moment, David's facade had melted and given way to sheer happiness. Excitement, even. That was what cemented his decision. Even with a tiny voice in the back of his mind saying that he was making the wrong choice, he wasn't about to take away that happiness from his father. To do so would be monstrous. They spoke about what would happen long into the night, finally setting the date for New Year's Day. Leonard hadn't bothered to ask if there was something symbolic about the date his father had chosen, and it honestly didn't matter to him if there was some sort of latent symbolism behind his choice. All that mattered was that he did what he promised to do.

It went off without a hitch. He showed up in the early hours of the morning, a small kit tucked under his arm. The rest of the family had been informed as to what was going to happen, and nobody had complaints. They escorted their him up to the door of the attic wordlessly, waiting for news as everything went on behind closed doors. David McCoy was dead within 30 minutes. A hypo of a potent but painless toxin to the neck made sure of that. David McCoy thanked his son profusely as the toxin paralysed him, sucking the life out of him in no time at all. 

Even though he hated what he'd done, he knew it was the right choice. He didn't regret his actions.

At least, he hadn't. Not until he'd gotten to into his office at the hospital that morning. On his desk was a copy of the daily paper, as always. It was the headline that struck him into silence.

" _Cure for Super-Disease Discovered; In Mass Production Starting Today_ "

He almost vomited into the bin right then and there. Instead, under the weight of all the other things that'd been on his mind, Leonard McCoy went in search of a phaser. Suicide wasn't a spur of the moment decision, not in the slightest. It'd been in the back of his mind for a long while now, occasionally raring up for a few weeks and then getting pushed back down. As much as he was for the idea, he'd never gotten that one final push off the cliff. This was it. There was no way he could possibly live with the knowledge that he'd prematurely euthanized his father only three days before a cure manifested itself. He couldn't live with that knowledge on top of everything else that was wrong with his life.

It hadn't been hard to find one, seeing as every goddamned security guard in the hospital had one in a thigh holster at all times. He'd only had to momentarily distract one with a bit of mindless conversation while his hand trailed down and snatched the phaser with deft fingers, quickly shoving in into the back pocket of his pants and making sure his lab coat covered it.

And that was how he'd ended up here, phaser on his desk (and set to kill), pacing his office.

\--

The sound of someone knocking on the door to his office was what jarred him from his thoughts. He looked up at the door, already certain that he was going to ignore the person on the other side, but curious as to who it was. He went rigid in his spot, trying to stay as quiet as humanly possible. He doubted that she'd be able to hear him pacing from the other side of the door, but he was unwilling to take that risk.

"Doctor McCoy?" It was the voice of a female. McCoy automatically placed it as one of his nurses. He could see the doorknob jiggling as she apparently tried to gain entry into the office. He was thankful that he'd locked the door the moment he'd returned. There was no way that anybody would be interrupting him. Not now. The nurse continued to knock for a few more seconds before leaving. McCoy sighed in relief, going to sit down in his desk chair. 

Wordlessly and without a second thought, Bones opened up the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. He kept the bottle there for the days when he needed a slight pick me up at work (and those days were ramping up in frequency) but today he needed the whole bottle. The shot glass that sat in the drawer went untouched, sliding back into darkness as the drawer closed. He unscrewed the bottle and drank until his throat felt like it was on fire.

His hands left the bottle to pick up the phaser. He liked how it felt in his hands, how it had weight to it. It looked good for a deadly weapon. His mind wandered away from his impending actions and picked up on the aftermath. Would Jocelyn miss him? A grim smile crossed his face. Of course Jocelyn would miss him. But not because she loved him, or even because they were in love.

_No, Jocelyn would miss him because she'd have lost her punching bag._

They'd been together since college, but Leonard didn't honestly think that she'd loved him in years. Sometimes he wondered if she'd ever loved him at all. She'd always been a temperamental woman, but it was always limited to yelling only. It'd stayed like that for years. In fact, things had been alright between them until Jocelyn's law career took off. God, the amount of stress that woman was under had been almost incomprehensible. He remembered spending whole nights wondering how she didn't snap. From as far as he could tell, the other lawyers at her firm had wound up dumping an avalanche of cases down on her. They all had something to do with some Federation colony, from what he could remember. The stress had been harmless at first, and then one day it'd all exploded.

All Leonard had meant to do was comfort his wife. He'd gone up to pull her into a hug and she wound up smacking him. Maybe she'd thought that he wanted something different, more erotic, or maybe she was just mad with him. Either way, he didn't say a word. He simply looked at his wife with shock, pain radiating from the side of his face. They never discussed it. He'd thought that it was going to be a one off thing. He was so far from being right that it hurt.

At first she'd only hit him every once in a blue moon. Usually it was after particularly bad days at work, or when they had some sort of blow up over something ridiculous. Even then, they never talked about it. Leonard took it in stride, telling himself that everyone lashed out and hit someone every once in awhile. As long as it stayed like that, everything'd be fine. Right?

_Wrong._

Jocelyn realized that she could get away with hitting her husband, and so she took to doing it more often. For absolutely no reason too, it seemed. The number of incidents had ramped up to the point that they happened almost every day. There'd been times where she'd gotten him so good that he'd had to take entire weeks off of work so that he could heal up. She'd sold his hovercar, drove him to and from work, had control of his money, and saw to it that he was never out of her sight unless he was at work. He had no escape from her. It only made him more certain that he was about to do the right thing.

McCoy stood up from his chair, somewhat tipsy and almost incapable of walking straight. He almost fell back down into the chair, but he was able to keep his balance like a pro. He'd gotten used to functioning while drunk, so much so that he'd spent much of the past year in an alcohol fuelled blur. Before he crossed the room, he took the bottle in his hand and drained it, letting it fall to the floor with a clunk. He made his way over to the opposite wall and slid down, phaser still in hand and his knees pulled up to his chest.

He took one final glance around his office, made sure that everything was as orderly as it was going to get. He was intentionally leaving the door locked, intentionally forgoing a suicide note (hoping that the newspaper on his desk said all it needed to say), and intentionally blowing his brains out against a wall (because he thought it would make for a nicer scene). He wondered when they'd find his body, what his colleagues would think, et cetera. His mind was racing with questions that he'd never get the answer to. He tilted his head back to place the tip of the phaser right underneath his jaw. 

 _At least,_ Leonard thought right before he pulled the trigger,  _the bloodstains will make an interesting pattern on the wall._

The sharp hum of a phaser firing, followed by the clank of the phaser hitting the floor were the only sounds to be heard before the room went silent.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't like this piece. It almost hit the scrap heap several times (and actually was deleted once) but it's here again. 
> 
> I really hope that I haven't offended anybody with my portrayal of the issues here!
> 
> If you've got comments/questions/concerns, feel free to let me know! I do my best to reply to all comments!


End file.
